The following abbreviations are herewith defined, at least some of which are referred to within the following description.
3GPP Third Generation Partnership Project
ANDSF Access Network Discovery and Selection Function
AP Access Point
APN Access Point Name
AS Access Stratum
CIoT Cellular Internet of Things
DCN Dedicated Core Network
DL Downlink
eNB Evolved Node B
EPC Evolved Packet Core
ETSI European Telecommunications Standards Institute
H-PLMN Home Public Land Mobile Network
HSS Home Subscriber Server
IMS IP Multimedia Subsystem
IP Internet Protocol
IoT Internet of Things
ISP Internet Service Provider
LAN Local Area Network
LTE Long Term Evolution
MBB Mobile Broadband
MME Mobility Management Entity
MMS Multimedia Messaging Service
MTC Machine-Type Communications
NAS Non-Access Stratum
NFV Network Function Virtualization
OFDM Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
PDCP Packet Data Convergence Protocol
PDU Protocol Data Unit
PGW Packet Data Network Gateway
PLMN Public Land Mobile Network
RAN Radio Access Network
RCS Rich Communication Services
RRC Radio Resource Control
SC-FDMA Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access
SGW Serving Gateway
SUPL Secure User Plane Location
TCP Transmission Control Protocol
UE User Entity/Equipment (Mobile Terminal)
UL Uplink
WAN Wide Area Network
WiMAX Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access
WLAN Wireless Local Area Network
In wireless communications networks, next generation of wireless networks (e.g., fifth-generation or “5G” networks) are expected to support different network slices. Each network slice can be seen as an independent network partition optimized to support the performance requirements of a certain application category. For example, a wireless communication network may contain a network slice optimized for mobile broadband services (characterized by high data rate and medium latency), a network slice optimized for autonomous driving (characterized by low latency and high reliability), a network slice optimized for massive Internet of Things (“IoT”) or Machine Type Communications (“MTC”) (characterized by low mobility and low data rate), and the like. Note that all network slices are deployed inside the same public land mobile network (“PLMN”).
Different application categories can be supported with different network slices, each network slice being optimized to support its corresponding application category. One slice may be designed to support an “Enhanced Mobile Broadband” application category, a second slice may be designed to support an “Ultra-reliable and Low Latency Communications” application category, and a third slice may be designed to support a “Massive Machine Type Communications” application category. A particular type of network slice may be deployed multiple times (i.e. have multiple instances) within the same PLMN. For example, a network operator may deploy multiple IoT/MTC slice instances to support multiple IoT customers such as utility companies, automotive companies, etc.
It is expected that network slices will be created and managed via network function virtualization (“NFV”) procedures. In a typical scenario, a network operator defines different virtual network templates, each one specifying a collection of compute, storage, and/or network resources and their configurations. Such template is essentially a representation of a network slice. When the operator wants to create a new slice, the operator instructs the NFV platform to construct a new virtual network based on a given template. The template may also contain rules for auto-scaling the resources of a slice in order to efficiently handle workload variations in the time domain.
In order to support several 5G application categories, it will be necessary for the same mobile device (e.g., User Equipment (“UE”)) to connect to multiple network slices. No existing solution enables a UE to both select a desired network slice (based on some criteria) and to attach to the selected network slice.